Neo-Latin Poetry in Renaissance France

Thanks to funding granted by the British Academy/Leverhulme (£9997, 2013) and the Modern Humanities Research Association (£16,500, 2009) to Prof. I. De Smet (Warwick), the late Prof. Ph. Ford (+) (Cambridge), and Prof. em. Brenda Hosington, preparations are under way for a posthumous edition of Ian D. McFarlane’s book manuscript Neo-Latin Poetry of Renaissance France.

Ian Dalrymple McFarlane, FBA, died on 17 August 2002. He is remembered as a fine and productive seiziémiste, but also as a pioneer of the study of Neo-Latin literature. His magisterial book on George Buchanan (1981) most notably combined his interests in Renaissance France (as testified in his work on Salmon Macrin, Clément Marot, Maurice Scève, Agrippa d’Aubigné and many others) with his Scottish ties and pan-European outlook.

At his death, McFarlane’s substantive history of Neo-Latin poetry in Renaissance France regrettably remained unpublished: it is this scholarly vacuum –as yet unfilled by others– which the current project seeks to address. "The McFarlane Project" was initially led by Dr Ingrid De Smet (Warwick) and the late Prof. Philip Ford, FBA (Cambridge).

Thanks to an MHRA Research Associateship, held by Dr Alexander Lee (Oct. 2009-March 2010) and J. Alexander Russell (Oct. 2010-March 2011), Prof. McFarlane’s typescript has been turned into an up-to-date, word-processed book manuscript.

In 2013 Prof. em. Brenda Hosington and Dr Antonina Kalinina joined the editorial team, to help check and translate the more than 35,000 words of (difficult) Latin quotations in the typescript, before the book can be submitted for publication in the MRTS Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies series of the Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies.

The initiative is already bearing fruit: two Franco-British panels in memoriam Ian D. McFarlane were held at the 15th International Congress of the International Association for Neo-Latin Studies to be held at Münster (Germany) in August 2012.

It is hoped that this project will act as a stimulus for further research on the rich and very influential vein of Latin poetry produced in Renaissance France and elsewhere in Early Modern Europe.